HER GOLDEN FALL

HER GOLDEN FALL

As gold as the maple leaves and school buses

Her thin golden hand

Lay beneath mine.

My hand so rosy, so pink, lavender with veins,

Her veins so olive green beneath the ochre skin.

I laid my hand on hers ---

So warm, it surprised me.

She breathed.

I breathed, and laid my hand on hers.

I didn’t know what else to do.

What to say to a sleeping maiden,

Gilded from within by jaundice, thin with cancer?

Thin except for her large livered midriff.

My eyes traced the bones of her face,

which I hadn’t seen before.

I could draw her, maybe some day.

Life sped through her green veins,

Oblivious to the sorceror’s apprentice of death

Busy at work in her liver.

I sat and composed this poem,

Chided myself.

Was I here to give comfort,

Or collect material for a poem?

And later, after I left, I was glad

That I had to go the bathroom.

It made it okay to want to wash my hands.

##

In memory of Yvonne, d. Nov. 11, 2006